MINIONS is now the 2nd Highest Grossing Animated Film of All Time

Minions is the Second Highest Grossing Animated Film in History. At the end of August, I mentioned how the Despicable Me spin-off, Minions, became the third highest grossing animated feature of all time as well as the third animated feature to surpass $1 billion, and the first non-Disney animated film to do so. Now that it has been released in China this weekend, it has broken even more records.

Minions made a total of 125 million yuan ($20.1 million) on its opening weekend in China, making it the biggest opening for an animated feature ever in the country. That opening is approximately 50% more than its previous holder, DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 2, which opened with 81 million yuan. This increases Minions box office total to $1.08 billion, surpassing Toy Story 3 as the second highest grossing animated feature.

Here’s the list of all the other records that Minions has broken so far:

The only animated franchise to have two spots in the top 5 highest grossing animated films (the other being Despicable Me 2)

Illumination Entertainment, along with Walt Disney Animation Studios, are the only animation studios to have two spots in the top 5 highest grossing animated films

The only non-Disney animated franchise to be really successful in all continents

The highest grossing animated franchise in terms of its average worldwide gross with about $800 million per film

The chances that Minions will surpass Disney’s Frozen to be the highest grossing animated film of all-time are, at this point, pretty small, but there is a good chance that its final tally could be pretty close to it. We’ll see how long the Minions will last in their final destination before taking a rest in home media.

About the author

Mathieu Brunet

My name is Mathieu Brunet (it’s French) and I have been an independent film critic for the past 5 years. My passion is animation and I’ve been writing and making my own video reviews of animated features on my YouTube channel (ElectricDragon505), which now has about 55,000 subscribers, housing videos with total views over 20,000,000. I am the creator of Electric Dragon Productions which includes AniMat’s Reviews and AniMat’s Classic Reviews.